Facing Pages

Symposium
28 & 29 March, Showroom Arnhem – Kleine Oord 177 – Arnhem, the Netherlands

This years symposium is about the power of print. With the theme ‘Make magazines not War’ a broad variety of international speakers will focus on the magazine as a tool for change. Do you want to escape todays reality or are you eager to improve your own world? Are you in or are you out?

In the sixties the slogan ‘Make love not War’ was used by hippies who tried to find new attitudes towards society. With doing so, they made a straigt message to autority; something needs to change. We think independent magazines are a contemtporary tool to do just that: find new attitudes for change. Two important attitudes surfaced the past few years within the magazine-scene: Activism and Escapism. Equally strong, they both take a refreshing approach towards the world we live in, compressed in print, spread out and shared with a broad variety of readers.

The first day of the symposium will focus on activism; speakers will talk about the power of punk, the clash with society, and finding a new vocabulairy to talk about sensitive subjects. The second day of the symposium revolves around escapism as an ode to fiction, a safe get away and a tool for personal growth. With both themes as a starting point, our speakers will show you  how independent magazines keep on developing new insights into our contemporary culture and how they express these themes in design, storytelling, publishing and fiction. At Facing Pages editors, designers, journalists, writers and other magazine lovers meet and inspire eachother.

Main Exhibition
28 March – 7 April, Dutch Art Institute (DAI) – Kortestraat 27 – Arnhem, the Netherlands

The exhibition is the beating heart of our biennale. Everyone is browsing through magazines, showing copies to each other and getting inspired in a very relaxing environment.

Within the exhibition there are some extra curated sections highlighting personal favourites of:
O.K. Parking; Joost and William, the big Cahuna’s of Facing Pages, who have been collecting and reviewing a huge pile of magazines in the past two years, sharing their unstoppable enthusiasm with the world.
Magpile; is an online platform to the world of magazines and a community for the people who read them. Magpile’s wiki-style database of magazines is an important online resource for publishers and their readers and brings all of the world’s magazines together in one place.
Athenaeum News centre offers the most unique collection of magazines in the Netherlands. From all over the world, they find and sell magazines in the field of opinion, politics, history, art, lifestyle, music, design, architecture. 

Visit the website of Facing Pages for more information or click on this link for the program.